A visit to the non-profit bakery Hot Bread Kitchen reveals how they make 12,000 tortillas a week—and how you can make them at home.

Corn tortillas are a revelation—find them, and tacos become more ethereal, tortilla chips get sweeter, and soon enough the tortillas from packages just won't do. Problem is, great tortillas are as elusive as they are delicious. You have to search out the Mexican restaurants that make them fresh, the Mexican groceries in cities like Los Angeles and Austin that sell tortillas still-warm.

Here in Epi's hometown, New York City, we're lucky to have Hot Bread Kitchen, which supplies the city with gorgeous heritage yellow and blue corn tortillas—tortillas so gorgeous that I ask to spend the morning at HBK to see how they're made.

Photo by Chelsea Kyle

That's where I meet Nancy Mendez, HBK's chief of tortillas. HBK is a not-for-profit bakery training center which supports immigrant and low-income women by teaching them the skills necessary to work as professional bakers. Mendez was one of the first participants in the program, back when HBK started in 2008, and she worked closely with HBK's founder, Jessamyn Rodriguez, to develop the tortilla recipe, which is based on those she grew up making and eating in Mexico.

At 4 a.m., when most of the city is still fast asleep, Mendez is starting to make the masa. Most of the fresh tortillas you'll find—including many of the tortillas in Mexico—are made from a mixture of water and masa harina, a finely ground corn flour. HBK goes a step above, making their own fresh masa (the Spanish word for dough) from organic dried corn sourced from farms in New York and the Midwest. To turn corn into masa, the bakery soaks it overnight in a lime solution, which starts the nixtamalization process. (Nixtamalization helps break down the corn, making it easier to turn into dough; it also increases the corn's nutritional value, flavor, and aroma.) Every morning, Mendez pushes the soaked (and now nixtamalized) corn through a huge grinder, turning it into masa. "The recipe is actually really basic," explains Grace Moore, HBK's Communications Manager. "It’s only corn, water, and a little lime. It’s the process and getting just the right consistency that makes it what it is."

By the time I arrive at 7 a.m., Mendez has made the masa and has already moved on to the bakery's industrial-sized tortilla press. And this is where I start to feel like Mr. Rogers on one of his factory tours. The machine is domineering, impressive, easily taking over one side of the kitchen. As Mendez feeds dough into the machine, she explains how important the texture is. "It’s not too wet, and when you put it in your hands, it won't stick," she says. She compares it to the texture of Play-Doh. I pick up a ball and feel for myself. Play-Doh is exactly right.

The machine rotates the masa around a die that flattens and cuts it into tortilla-sized circles. From there, the masa gets cooked under a series of flames, then cooled. Finally, the tortillas are stacked into neat rows, ready for packaging. But one tortilla comes off the line and is handed straight to me. It's phenomenally delicious, with a true flavor of fresh corn. I have to know how to make these at home. So I ask Mendez to show me how I can do it on a smaller scale.

Photo by Chelsea Kyle

Luckily, tortillas are such a big part of her life that Mendez, who helps the bakery churn out approximately 12,000 tortillas a week, often makes them at home as well. "My husband likes them fresh, and my daughter wants to learn how to make them," she says. She pulls out a tortilla press, which looks dwarfishly small compared to the HBK's massive machine, and quickly shows me the steps. First, she lines both sides of the tortilla press with plastic wrap. She then takes a golf-ball-sized ball of masa, places it on the press, covers it with plastic, and closes the tortilla press over it. After a quick jiggle of the handle to help flatten the dough, she lifts the press and, of course, her tortilla comes out in a perfect circle.

I'd always thought that making homemade tortillas would be too much work at home. But after watching Mendez do it, and tasting that fresh flavor, I feel ready to tackle it. Back in the Epi kitchen, I try it out for myself, using masa harina. Although it's not the same as fresh masa, the corn for masa harina is cooked with lime solution before being dried and ground into flour, so it has some of that quintessential flavor. (It's also much, much easier to find.)

Following Mendez's tips, I add water to the masa harina a little at a time, squeezing it to make sure it has that Play-Doh consistency. Then I roll it into a ball, press it, and jiggle the handle of the tortilla press to get it flat and round. Surprisingly, it looks a lot like Mendez's version, and, thanks to high-heat cooking in a cast iron pan, it had a nice charred flavor. From flour to tortilla, the whole process takes about 30 minutes, and you know what? It's (almost) as easy as Mendez made it look.